Baby planning: Pill making men infertile?

Falling sperm counts have been directly linked to the
Pill for the first time. Women who continue to take the
contraceptive without realising they are pregnant may
damage the reproductive system of male babies, scientists
have discovered.

The findings could help to explain the mysterious rise
in male infertility in the West. An estimated two million
women in the UK, Europe and the U.S. take the Pill while
pregnant every year.

'Women who get pregnant while taking the Pill are being
told that this will have no effect,' said Dr. Frederick vom
Saal, one of a team behind the findings. 'This idea that it
can affect mothers but not the foetus is ridiculous. The
foetus is far more sensitive to hormones than adults.'

In the first research of its kind, his team exposed male
mouse foetuses to doses of the synthetic hormone commonly
used in the Pill. The amounts and length of time were
equivalent to a woman taking the contraceptive until the
16th week of a human pregnancy.

They then tested the sperm counts of the mice once they had
reached maturity. Daily production was reduced in all the
animals who had been exposed to the hormones, they report
in the scientific journal Human Reproduction.

Dr. vom Saal, of the University of Missouri, fears the
damage done to the human reproductive ssystem would be
identical.
'There is no reason to think that oestrogen is going to do
something unique to the mouse that it does not do in the
human,' he said, adding that his team had been astonished
to discover that no similar studies had been done
before.

'There is an illusion that women who take the Pill don't
get pregnant. In fact, among teenage girls, there is a
phenomenally high number,' he said. 'The consensus is that
in Europe and the US, there are about two million women a
year who get pregnant and continue to take these pills.

In the UK, the average man's sperm count has fallen by
half in the last 60 years, though the cause of the decline
has remained largely mysterious.

One in six British couples now struggles to conceive and
the number seeking medical help has risen 55 per cent in
the last five years to 27,000 a year. Dr. vom Saal said he
believed the Pill may be one explanation. It has previously
been suggested that the Pill is partly responsible for
rising levels of synthetic hormones in the environment,
such as the water supply, which may be linked to growing
infertility.

Women exposed to regular high doses of electromagnetic
radiation from microwave ovens, hairdryers and washing
machines could be six times more likely to miscarry in the
first ten weeks of pregnancy, scientists warned.

American researchers from the respected Kaiser Foundation
Research Institute in San Francisco monitored the exposure
to the electromagnetic radiationof 969 pregnant women in
the Californian city in a study to be published in the
medical journal Epidemiology.

British experts from the National Radiological Protection
Board and the Department of Health said other research had
not found a link.